2013年5月26日托福閱讀機(jī)經(jīng).docx

2013年5月26日托?？荚囬喿x機(jī)經(jīng)整理by 南京環(huán)雅鄒中杰綜述：本次閱讀考試總體難度高于上周考試，很顯著的特點(diǎn)在于：素材+結(jié)構(gòu)的雙重柔和，即素材有交叉，并且結(jié)構(gòu)上也更加復(fù)雜，在接下來的考試中這一趨勢(shì)是否會(huì)有所延續(xù)我們將繼續(xù)關(guān)注考試。第一篇主題：Distribution of Plants and Animals本文主要講解地球上植物之間的相似性要遠(yuǎn)大于動(dòng)物。其中包括以下幾個(gè)原因：原因一是植物很早以前就開始大范圍傳播，在大陸板塊分開之前就分布到各處，而動(dòng)物出現(xiàn)得較晚；原因二是動(dòng)物曾經(jīng)歷了多次大滅絕，且之后出現(xiàn)的新物種代替了舊物種與原來很不相同，而植物則很長壽；原因三是動(dòng)物群不如植物群一樣分散廣，每一個(gè)地方都有特定的動(dòng)物種類，只有當(dāng)大陸相連接的時(shí)候，動(dòng)物才能進(jìn)行傳播。植物群分散比較廣，并且即便是由于大陸漂移，植物也可以越過海洋進(jìn)行種子的傳播。所以人們能看到各個(gè)地方相似的植物群出現(xiàn)。最后轉(zhuǎn)折，在亞洲和非洲兩地的動(dòng)物相似性卻很高，是因?yàn)楫?dāng)時(shí)一度亞非板塊相連。解析：在托福閱讀考試中其實(shí)很難簡單如此篇文章這樣柔和了動(dòng)物和植物，并且使用分類結(jié)構(gòu)進(jìn)行闡述的文章，不過這一現(xiàn)象也折射出托?？荚嚒白冸y”的趨勢(shì)，這樣的文章明顯對(duì)考生提出了更高的要求，一方面考生需要具備相關(guān)背景知識(shí)，另外一方面也需要對(duì)文章結(jié)構(gòu)有所了解。下面給出一篇同素材參考范文：A research team involving Yale University and the University of Colorado Boulder has developed a first public demonstration version of its “Map of Life,” an ambitious Web-based endeavor designed to show the distribution of all living plants and animals on the planet.The demonstration version allows anyone with an Internet connection to map the known global distribution of almost 25,000 species of terrestrial vertebrate animals, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and North American freshwater fish. The database, which continues to expand, already contains hundreds of millions of records on the abundance and distribution of the planets diverse flora and fauna.“We are taking 200 years of different types of knowledge coming from different sources, all documenting the locations of species around the world and compiling them in a way that will greatly enhance our knowledge of biodiversity,” said CU-Boulder Associate Professor Robert Guralnick of the ecology and evolutionary biology department, part of the Map of Life research team. “Such information could be used by any organization that needs to make informed decisions regarding land management, health, conservation and climate change.”The initial version of the map tool being released today is intended to introduce it to the broader public, according to the researchers. It allows users to see several levels of detail for a given species - at its broadest, the type of environment it lives in, and at its finest, specific locations where the species presence has been documented. One function allows users to click a point on the map and generate a list of vertebrate species in the surrounding area. More functions will be added over time, according to the team.“It is the where and the when of a species,” said Walter Jetz, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale and the project lead. “It puts at your fingertips the geographic diversity of life. Ultimately, the hope is for this literally to include hundreds of thousands of animal and plant species and show how much or indeed how little we know of their whereabouts.”A paper by Jetz, Guralnick and Jana McPherson of the Calgary Zoological Society describing the evolving Map of Life technology tool appeared in a recent issue of the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.By highlighting the known abundance and distribution of species, the researchers hope to identify and fill knowledge gaps and also offer a tool for detecting change over time. They expect the map tool will prove useful for professional scientists, wildlife and land managers, conservation organizations and the general public.The team is using information gleaned from a wide variety of sources, including field guides, museum collections and wildlife checklists that involved scientists, conservation organizations and “citizen scientists.” The projects success will depend on participation by other scientists and informed amateurs, and subsequent versions of the mapping tool will offer mechanisms for users to supply new or missing information about the distribution and abundance of particular species.Jetz called the Map of Life “an infrastructure, something to help us all collaborate, improve, share and understand the still extremely limited geographic knowledge about biodiversity.” The team continues to work on several other tasks and challenges, including who will be contributing data and how information supplied by the contributors will be verified and curated.“A small but powerful next step is to provide a means for anyone, anywhere on the globe to use their mobile devices to instantly pull up animal and plant distributions and even get a realistic assessment on the odds of encountering a particular species of wildlife,” said Guralnick, who also is the curator of invertebrate zoology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History.Guralnick said the Map of Life project is following in the footsteps of other knowledge repositories like the GenBank project, a National Institutes of Health-funded effort with a public database of more than 135 million gene sequences from more than 300,000 organisms that allows users to explore genes and genomes using bioinformatics tools. In the biodiversity arena, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility in Copenhagen has developed an important resource that provides access to more than 300 million records of plant and animal occurrences, which is one of the distributional databases being used by the Map of Life team.The National Science Foundation has provided initial support for the Map of Life project. Other supporters are the Encyclopedia of Life; the International Union for the Conservation of Nature; and the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, and the Biodiversity and Climate Research Center, both in Germany.第二篇主題：determining the age of planets and universe 宇宙里面組成的物質(zhì)都是一樣的，形成的時(shí)間也比較相仿。科學(xué)家發(fā)現(xiàn)不同的的星球上留下的遺跡通過科學(xué)測(cè)量，月球和巖石形成的時(shí)間都是一樣的，得出結(jié)論，所有星球形成時(shí)間相仿。地球上有很多水，有腐蝕，不能作為參數(shù)進(jìn)行比較。但是月球和小行星進(jìn)行比較，目前人類史上沒出現(xiàn)小行星撞擊地球，但宇宙爆炸產(chǎn)生的小行星碎片已隕石的狀態(tài)掉落到地球上。解析：對(duì)比結(jié)構(gòu)所闡述的天文學(xué)素材文章，在這一文章中ETS將宇宙與地球、小行星與大行星進(jìn)行了很好的對(duì)比，對(duì)比型結(jié)構(gòu)文章對(duì)考生的要求相對(duì)較高，一方面需要找到對(duì)比的兩方面甚至更多方面，另一方面也要注意到素材之間細(xì)微的差別，解題過程中分清文章層次和素材分割點(diǎn)是關(guān)鍵。下面給出一篇同素材參考文章：Making a statement about the age of the Universe implies the fundamental assumption that the Universe had a beginning.Although we can easily determine that most constituents of our visible Universe, such as the islands of Hawaii, our Sun, the Earth, the Moon and the stars that we see at night, had a beginning, it is much more difficult to determine if the ensemble of all those things had a starting point in the past. One could imagine that the Universe itself has always been there, but that all of its componentsthe atoms, the planets and the starsgo through a continuous cycle of birth, life and death.Until recently, this view of an eternal universe has dominated the history of philosophy. Today, we talk much about the Big Bang theory, which is a very solid and consistent physical theory of the origin and the evolution of the universe as we now observe it. We forget that for most of human history, an eternal universe was accepted as the most economical way of explaining the Cosmos.Even today there is an independent physical theory of the Universe called the Steady State Universe. This theory, supported by a small minority of astronomers, defends a model of an eternal universe where the well-known expansion of the Universe is countered by the continuous creation of one hydrogen atom per 10,000 cubic meters per year (this is a very small amount of matter) to maintain its average density constant. Hence the Universe should appear the same in all directions (this is isotropy) and at all distances and epochs (this is homogeneity).The idea that the Universe had a beginning is relatively new and quite revolutionary.第三篇主題：agricultural and settlement around the NIle主要講撒哈拉沙漠和尼羅河對(duì)居民的影響。大家都認(rèn)為尼羅河對(duì)于居民的定居是積極意義的，沙漠有著消極的影響。但實(shí)際上兩個(gè)方面是相互影響。在很多年前，當(dāng)時(shí)撒哈拉沙漠還是一片比較富裕的土地，土壤比較適宜，但是隨著氣候逐漸變干，撒哈拉沙漠已經(jīng)不適宜人們居住，人們被迫遷移到尼羅河周圍，尼羅河那里比較適宜人類的居住，但是大洪水在尼羅河的泛濫導(dǎo)致在溪流邊上的人民到達(dá)介于河流和沙漠的一片土地上躲避洪水，退卻后，人們恢復(fù)正常的生活。隨著氣候的變化，越來越多額游牧主義社群開始定居下來sedentary lifestyle，以莊稼的種植和農(nóng)業(yè)的發(fā)展來不斷的提供穩(wěn)定的食物來源，其中談到非洲農(nóng)作物源于東亞。解析：這是一篇文章結(jié)構(gòu)和素材都與TPO閱讀中“17世紀(jì)歐洲經(jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展”非常相似的一篇文章，大家可以參考TPO文章對(duì)這篇文章做出解析。下面給出一篇同素材參考文章：On the following evening Haschim， the merchant， came to the governors house with a small part of his caravan. A stranger might have taken the mansion for the home of a wealthy country-gentleman rather than the official residence of a high official； for at this hour， after sunset， large herds of beasts and sheep were being driven into the vast court-yard behind the house， surrounded on three sides by out-buildings； half a hundred horses of choice breed came， tied in couples， from the watering-place； and in a well-sanded paddock enclosed by hurdles， slaves， brown and black， were bringing fodder to a large troop of camels.The house itself was well-fitted by its unusually palatial size and antique splendor to be the residence of the emperors viceroy， and the Mukaukas， to whom it all belonged， had in fact held the office for a long time. After the conquest of the country by the Arabs they had left him in possession， and at the present date he managed the affairs of his Egyptian fellow-countrymen， no more in the name of the emperor at Byzantium， but under the authority of the Khaliff at Medina and his great general， Amru. The Moslem conquerors had found him a ready and judicious mediator； while his fellow-Christians and country-men obeyed him as being the noblest and wealthiest of their race and the descendant of ancestors who had enjoyed high distinction even under the Pharaohs.Only the governors residence was Greekor rather Alexandrian-in style； the court-yards and out-buildings on the contrary， looked as though they belonged to some Oriental magnate-to some Erpaha （or prince of a province） as the Mukaukas forefathers had been called， a rank which commanded respect both at court and among